So, I was in trial. Not just a district court trial with just a judge. I was in a jury trial that 100% consumed me and all my time right as the summer started. Now, of course much work is done on jury trials in advance of walking into court to pick a jury on that first day. Those weeks prior to trial are crunch time and an immense amount of work and preparation is achieved during that time period.

            As I emerged from my trial, I tried to dial in with myself about how I felt about being in trial as an attorney. All that could come to mind was how immense the amount of work felt in order for me to be prepared for this trial, and how every day I continued preparing for each day of trial with vigor and enthusiasm about the next day. So, it got me thinking about how we, as lawyers who are litigators, actually LIVE through jury trials.

            Jury trials are totally variable. You can have a jury trial that concludes in a day OR you can be some poor sap that has a jury trial that concludes in a total of six months (not kidding, the OJ Simpson trial took eight (8) months to try). A colleague of mine was just in a murder trial that spanned six weeks. Think about that. You are in constant vigilant status for six weeks. No rest. No feeling of relief. No feelings of resolution. Just constant vigilance and stress for weeks on end. In my most recent trial that lasted for two full weeks, I remember just getting up each day and feeling like a robot that was programmed to just achieve the day’s tasks and look toward the next day. It wasn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination. And that is not even taking into account the emotional element of certain trials. When I realized that I was feeling like an automaton just robotically moving through the trial, I tried to take a minute to step back and ask myself, what parts of this were bringing me joy. What parts of the trial in which I was actively participating felt good? Take for instance cross-examination. I tried to dial in with myself about whether or not THIS aspect of my craft was not only interesting to me, but did I even LIKE performing it? Even though taxing and hard to accomplish, was I literally happy in what I was actually doing at the moment? Hmmmm… interesting question.  What did I enjoy about the trial? What tasks was I performing on a regular basis that made me happy? Was I getting joy out of legal argument? Or was it all about the examinations of witnesses and introduction of pieces of evidence? I am a lawyer that was drawn to the human interaction side of the law. When I was a prosecutor, I really wanted to interact with people, direct client services. So, I think that is why I gravitated to domestic violence; because there was always another actual physical PERSON on the other end that I had to speak to. That is just me. So how did that characteristic translate to actual trial? In retrospect, I think it became less work for me in trial when I had an opportunity to engage directly with the witnesses. Ask them questions and conduct an examination in more of a conversational style than an inquiry style. Listen to their answers and see if their answers were expected or not expected. And when those answers were unexpected, what to do next?

            We must always stop and think about not only what we are actually doing as practitioners but if we continue still enjoy what we are doing. Do we look forward to anything? Are we excited to work on a case or prepare for trial or deposition? If we fail to do that, dying at our desk with nothing to really show for our work becomes more of a reality than not. And, I choose not.